>two feminist groups and several former students filed a federal complaint accusing the University of Mary Washington...of failing to protect the female plaintiffs from cyber harassment...
I am confused as to why anyone thinks its the University's duty to protect their students from "cyber harassment." I mean, I am aware of Title IX and all, I am just shocked at the amount of control, influence, and involvement into their students' lives universities are expected to have.
If a student is driving to class and hits a bird (causing them gross emotional trauma) did the university fail to protect them from rouge avians?
Sadly it's what the parents today (who pay the tuition) are demanding. Hence "unique snowflakes" and "helicopter parents." Add to that a healthy dose of media sensationalism to a degree that never used to happen. Everything is drama, crisis, outrage, injustice.
If you're imagining a student driving to class, you're imagining a very different kind of environment.
In the schools where these kinds of demands are made, the university provides your housing, food, utilities, medical care, the centers of your social life (both in terms of facilities and student organizations), local police department, credit union, etc. Even if you live off campus, the entire neighborhood is an (unofficial) extension of the university community. Even if you're at a private business, the university probably owns the building and leases to that business. Private apartment building, your neighbors are all students and faculty.
This typically happens in a small, walkable enclave where it would be very strange for a student to have a car or commute in from outside the enclave. The university owns every part of a student's life in this case, and it's reasonable to think it has some responsibility to keep its community healthy, within reasonable limits.
Your criticism seems more applicable to a commuter/community college, not a residential one.
Are you really confused? Leaving the law & federal funding requirements aside, Universities seek to have successful graduates & thus it is in their best interest to provide an environment that equips their students to learn. Being harassed undermines these goals, so regardless of the law, it is in their best interest to prevent such disruptions.
I'm not sure I understand the bird analogy. Is the point that Universities can't control birds? Well, Universities can & do already actually demand that their students not harass other students as a condition of their attendance.
I live in the city of Fredericksburg, Virginia. There was a savage murder a few years ago where the girl who got murdered was being harassed on YikYak. I wouldn't go as far as to blame this app for her death but she did receive threats through it, which later turned out to be her roommate who murdered her.
The article makes the case (to me) that local + anonymous was a failed experiment. In real-life communities, local means not anonymous, and bad behavior -- which is rare whether anonymous or not -- can be tied to an individual right away.
The problem is that nasty, anonymous, and local is a terrible combination:
> That hyper-localization is also what made the cases of harassment particularly galling. Ms. Musick, one of the plaintiffs, said, “With Yik Yak, in the back of your mind, you know they’re not from around the world or other parts of the state, they’re right there in your classroom, in your dining hall. On a campus with 4,500 students, that’s a pretty small group of people. This isn’t some creepy guy in his mom’s basement in Indiana.”
In contrast, nasty, anonymous, and non-local is much easier to dismiss.
The plaintiffs tried to solve it other ways, but they couldn't. All the local authorities referred them back to Yik-Yak -- the university staff, local police -- and Yik-Yak usually did nothing and at best would hide posts.
To be clear, most of Yik-Yak was non-harassing. Useful? I don't know. Apparently not useful enough.
I'm not sure this is entirely fair. YikYak's undoing was doing away with the features that brought people to it; it was a very popular application, and continued to be right up until the de-anonymizing aspects were brought into play. It's function a digital bathroom wall was pretty well executed and in most cases, seemingly a success for interaction. It wasn't really good for anything else besides shitposting, but it definitely was something that people wanted.
I was working at a University in the heyday of YikYak and yes, there were bad posts. Since it was tech related, our administration asked my department to keep an eye on it, but for our school (4500 some students), the attitude was more moderate than it was abusive. Threatening or harassing Yaks were almost always down-voted off the app before we'd even have a chance to see it.
Obviously, other institutions didn't have the same luck that we did, but from my point of view, there was a very good moderation system in place from YikYak - sure, anyone could post something anonymously that was malicious and hateful - but it was incredibly easy to clear it from YikYak.
The student body also took a huge interest in making sure that YikYak stayed in the spirit of anonymous; lot of articles in the student paper about it, lot of rants on the random Facebook Confess pages, and YikYak itself was filled with comments about keeping "stupid shit" off of it. Did some kids still post stupid stuff? Sure, but the rest were more inclined to help with the upkeep.
Zephyr, the first IP-based IM system, briefly experimented with anonymity. It was similarly local--mostly being on the MIT campus (links to CMU zephyr being rare). I've not seen a historical record of the messages posted, but I've been told by multiple grey-haired alums that things turned toxic very quickly.
> “With Yik Yak, in the back of your mind, you know they’re not from around the world or other parts of the state, they’re right there in your classroom, in your dining hall. On a campus with 4,500 students, that’s a pretty small group of people. This isn’t some creepy guy in his mom’s basement in Indiana.”
I mean is this really true? I was interacting with UCI students when I spent nights working in the Google complex. That's at least a couple mile radius.
Seems like this would have worked better if the anonymity were weakened. For example, a range between "click this button to deanonymize" and "do roughly 30 minutes of work on a modern desktop to break the key that reveals who posted this" which is chosen by the poster.
There's still value in posting such weak anonymous messages, but the foreknowledge that it will eventually get broken would ward off the worst of the abuses.
I wouldn't say we know it's useful or not. It went to profiles with handles and profile pictures. It lost its appeal when it did that. That's was when my community jumped ship to Jodel.
This article seems to miss the point of why Yik Yak really failed. It didn't fail because of bullying, or bad publicity - That doesn't discourage users from using the app unless they're the ones targeted. The app failed because of the ham fisted attempts to control the userbase and remove a problem that did not affect the vast, vast majority of the userbase by introducing the "Handles" feature, and then later making it non-optional.
I'm not even sure if this was a response to harassment, at the time it almost seemed like a pivot for the company - To become the next Snapchat or Facebook, sell targeted ads, and become what every other social company does. This was not what users wanted. It was the only place where people could truly make their thoughts heard without fearing social backlash, which is an issue of incredible importance for University students. And being able to talk with people of a similar age from your University was the perfect gauge for all those things you might want to say but can't. And the handles feature completely removed that. It became extremely easy to tie a person to a handle (Simply watch them while they've got the app open!). There was clear and immediate backlash and people started uninstalling the app en-masse, even posting on the platform about why they were doing so. Yik Yak reversed the update but the damage had already been done - People didn't trust the company to make the right decision any more, and the majority of users never reinstalled.
Note that I'm not saying harassment was good and that the company should have just thrown their hands up in the air and done nothing - The change marking offensive language was welcome, and responding to geo-fence requests in problem areas was fine. But the article fails to mention that the community moderation is incredibly effective. Stupid and offensive yaks were removed quickly through the power of the community - It only took 5 people to say "I don't like this" and you could remove a post.
Perhaps where I was (A small university in the north east of England), we didn't feel any real harassment. People posted racist and homophobic things occasionally, but these posts were quickly removed. Changes to the apps main functionality and appeal came overnight and surprised many people. They now hated the app, aimed at removing a problem that simply didn't exist in the community.
A major issue I had with yik yak was that it really didn't work if you were going to a commuter school or lived in the suburbs then the local list was dead.
I agree. Their app became popular as a place for uncensored, anonymous speech. When they started censoring and requiring usernames their customers spitefully deleted the app.
There are so few places left in the US where someone can engage in free speech. Free speech is nearly nonexistent on college campuses. Yik Yak was offering a product users couldn't find anywhere else. But they threw it all away.
I'm a big believer in fully anonymous communication. Unfortunately, we live in a censorious age. Those who enable anonymous communication frequently become the targets of legal and social pressure exerted by angry mobs, mobs mostly composed of people who aren't even trying to communicate anonymously. Yik Yak fell in part because, instead of listening to their users, they listened to people who weren't their users.
The next Yik Yak needs to be fully decentralized --- with anonymous development, so there's nobody to sue --- and with a network architecture that resists technical blocking attempts. The next Yik Yak needs to treat censors as adversaries, not partners. Only this approach can bring anonymous communication to its full potential.
Doing so, you're completely ignoring the problem of harassment. Not only ignoring, but basically putting up a huge neon sign saying, "Harassers come here and spew your harassment!" And I would have to consider working on such a project to be completely unethical.
I have little sympathy for Yik Yak. One of the other commenters mentioned that it was a forum for shitposting...it's true, almost exclusively. That's no business model. Good riddance.
If you really want local, anonymous communication, make a throwaway account on reddit and visit a given school's subreddit.
The ability to shitpost with all types of people from your university was the drawing factor. I am sure that 99.9% of people who go to my university have never heard of 4chan, and maybe 20% (probably less) will use Reddit on a regular basis?
Reddit also brings the issue that you're stuck talking to the same types of people - Generally young, white, nerdy guys. That girl on your rowing team or, the one you met in a club last week and oh so need to know the name of certainly has never heard of reddit - but she will have Yik Yak! The barrier to entry is so low, and it used to be a real talking point on campus. It was a social faux pas not to have it installed.
I wish the author had spent a bit more time trying to uncover the inside story of Yik Yak as well. It would have been nice to see a post mortem from employees, investors or the founders.
Surprised it hasn't been replaced by someone outside the US who wouldn't be pressured to make it a safe space. Not discounting the potential issues...just surprised it hasn't happened.
The question is, could anyone else raise enough money to get something like this started again after what Yik Yak became? VC funds likely won't want to touch something like Yik Yak for a while. At the very least a platform that so visibly enables anonymous coordination of harassment is unlikely to attract the advertisers or sponsors they would need to become profitable.
You're right, there has been a disturbing trend in the US of creating safe spaces for racists [1], like in the White House [2] [3], college campuses [4], fraternities [5], Trump rallies [6], and even Broadway [7], to enumerate a few examples.
But don't be surprised, because it's already happened: Germany's Jodel network is much more successful than Yik Yak, with its strict guidelines [8] against racism, discrimination and hate speech, so it isn't a safe space for racists, like Yik Yak was and the White House still is [9].
What ruined Yik Yak for me was making the geographical areas larger so my University's 'herd' included surrounding cities too. Too much noise. This compounded with the removal of anonymity led to me deleting the application.
Wonder if it is possible to run an app like this at cost somehow.
> Wonder if it is possible to run an app like this at cost somehow.
Given that it's just an API serving short text snippets, the hosting costs shouldn't be more than a few cents per user per year. Let's say you're serving one university with 50,000 students, and your hosting costs are $3,000 per year... Just send out an update email once a quarter with a few ads at the end and you've more than covered your expenses.
To me, Tyler Droll and Brooks Buffington sound like joke parody names for clueless rich overprivileged frat boy brogrammers, from an episode of Silicon Valley or The Simpsons.
I'm pretty sure it died because they started adding accounts and identities and stuff, which people didn't want. When it was fully anonymous it was popular, but once they tried to remove the anonymity, it started to die. It got a bit more popular when they started bringing back the anonymity, but it was too late by then.
A problem Yik Yak had was that it was primarily a university level product and because of the proximity features they had to restart their network growth after each vacation. Tying Location with some kind of organization or have a decay function for location based on time spent in that location could have perhaps fixed the issue.
Sounds like an ignorance is bliss type of story to me. Just because it may not be in some app next time doesn't mean nobody is having the same thoughts or says the same things in some other form. Blaming some app for the existence of harassment seems rather far-fetched to me.
Honestly, I don't get all the complaining from harassment.
We live in a digital age where we can control a large amount of our information stream. If we don't like something, we just turn off the stream. It's like left-wing advocates and Fox. They don't like it, so they don't watch it.
If you don't like what people are posting on some service, remove the service, inform people you know that you don't care about what's posted.
Go on living, stop being a hyper-sensitive prick about people saying mean things. They're going to say them whether or not it's on Yik-Yak, 4chan, or Facebook.
But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm missing something. Let me know. I love being wrong, it lets me learn new things.
"But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm missing something. Let me know. I love being wrong, it lets me learn new things"
So, I think the concept of society especially for teenagers in their school-controlled world is very interesting.
You're ostensibly right, "just turn it off", but I think it's more complicated.
So why would someone go to a place voluntarily where they are being attacked?
Maybe, it's an important part of the society there, an important forum that the most respected people are using.
Being a part of your local Yik Yak for teenagers is like going to I/O or WWDC, you're in the nexus of the community.
I think those chats acted that way for many teenagers. The location-binding feature is perfect for the insular school communities to create exclusive popular communities.
And to be as mean as they wanted through them.
Also with regards to harassment, Yik Yak would commonly be a place where people go to discuss real life harassment of others.
So, for those unfortunate few, they weren't going to Yik Yak and seeing harassment, rather, they never went, but their harassers used Yik Yak to discuss, refine, and promote the real life harassment.
I think it's very complicated to try and insert ourselves back into the insular school mentality to try and understand this, but I think it's simple that Yik Yak was/is a popular tool for coordinating real life bullying.
Why bend over backwards and cut yourself off from your college community just to cater to jerks? Do you think the mods of HN are "hyper-sensitive pricks" for trying to preserve the quality of discourse here?
People seem to live under this illusion that the internet is somehow completely removed from real life, that the bigotry and hate doesn't count if it's over a computer. "Just close your eyes and pretend it isn't happening. So what if people are calling your house, your employer, your family; stalking you everywhere you go; threatening to kill you on an hourly basis; calling in a SWAT raid. Just ignore it!"
On the contrary, I think it's long past time our society grew up and stopped trying to make excuses for outrageously bad behavior. These aren't harmless pranks. They're part of a culture that normalizes hate to the point that it emboldens people to commit violence, on college campuses and elsewhere.
I believe you are wrong in assuming this blasée attitude is the right one or obvious one for everyone.
In a way you are overestimating the maturity of teenagers and young adults. In another way I think you are overestimating your own (and anyone's) ability to handle personal offense on a topic that you are sensitive about from a person that you know and it is close to you (you don't know who is, but you know you know the person, that's the point of hyper local).
The article touchs on that. One thing is a person saying things you don't like on TV directed to the masses. Another thing is a person far from you and who you don't know saying bad things directly to you and your friends. And yet another thing is someone you know and it is close to you saying bad things directly to you and your friends. This last one is much harder to act like you don't care.
But, ultimately, it is not about being right or wrong, it is about exercising empathy. Understanding that people react differently to situations and we have to consider that if we care for them. Doesnt matter if we personally would react so much better than them or not.
The problem from Koster's perspective is that when the target of harrassment/abuse/etc. turns off the source feed the feed still goes into the target's community. The communications analogy is not hanging up the telephone. The harrasement/abuse/etc. is delivered in public. Even if the target does not see it, the target's community does.
Perhaps an analogy is that one afternoon all of the target's neighbors opened their mailbox to find a flier falsely asserting that the target was a child molester. Most of the intended effect stems from the target's neighbors reading the flier. It doesn't matter much if the target read it. And in conversations with neighbors, "no I did not read it" does not make it better...and the fact that there are conversations with neighbors means that not reading the flier is not a way of avoiding the harassment/abuse/etc.
I live in the city where YikYak was used to harass an activist at Mary Washington University in Fredericksburg, Virginia. She was later savagely murdered.
[+] [-] pitaa|8 years ago|reply
I am confused as to why anyone thinks its the University's duty to protect their students from "cyber harassment." I mean, I am aware of Title IX and all, I am just shocked at the amount of control, influence, and involvement into their students' lives universities are expected to have.
If a student is driving to class and hits a bird (causing them gross emotional trauma) did the university fail to protect them from rouge avians?
[+] [-] ams6110|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lr4444lr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] closeparen|8 years ago|reply
In the schools where these kinds of demands are made, the university provides your housing, food, utilities, medical care, the centers of your social life (both in terms of facilities and student organizations), local police department, credit union, etc. Even if you live off campus, the entire neighborhood is an (unofficial) extension of the university community. Even if you're at a private business, the university probably owns the building and leases to that business. Private apartment building, your neighbors are all students and faculty.
This typically happens in a small, walkable enclave where it would be very strange for a student to have a car or commute in from outside the enclave. The university owns every part of a student's life in this case, and it's reasonable to think it has some responsibility to keep its community healthy, within reasonable limits.
Your criticism seems more applicable to a commuter/community college, not a residential one.
[+] [-] gotothedoctor|8 years ago|reply
I'm not sure I understand the bird analogy. Is the point that Universities can't control birds? Well, Universities can & do already actually demand that their students not harass other students as a condition of their attendance.
[+] [-] killin_dan|8 years ago|reply
Rouge avians would just be red birds. Not sure which is funnier in this example.
My school had geese, which were definitely rogue-ass birds.
[+] [-] lapsock|8 years ago|reply
The police clearly don't give a shit. Someone has to do something. What are universities doing with all that money they get from tuition?
[+] [-] chrshawkes|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulcole|8 years ago|reply
Yeah it does seem odd that a university wouldn't want its students to be harassed on campus.
[+] [-] neolefty|8 years ago|reply
The problem is that nasty, anonymous, and local is a terrible combination:
> That hyper-localization is also what made the cases of harassment particularly galling. Ms. Musick, one of the plaintiffs, said, “With Yik Yak, in the back of your mind, you know they’re not from around the world or other parts of the state, they’re right there in your classroom, in your dining hall. On a campus with 4,500 students, that’s a pretty small group of people. This isn’t some creepy guy in his mom’s basement in Indiana.”
In contrast, nasty, anonymous, and non-local is much easier to dismiss.
The plaintiffs tried to solve it other ways, but they couldn't. All the local authorities referred them back to Yik-Yak -- the university staff, local police -- and Yik-Yak usually did nothing and at best would hide posts.
To be clear, most of Yik-Yak was non-harassing. Useful? I don't know. Apparently not useful enough.
[+] [-] csydas|8 years ago|reply
I was working at a University in the heyday of YikYak and yes, there were bad posts. Since it was tech related, our administration asked my department to keep an eye on it, but for our school (4500 some students), the attitude was more moderate than it was abusive. Threatening or harassing Yaks were almost always down-voted off the app before we'd even have a chance to see it.
Obviously, other institutions didn't have the same luck that we did, but from my point of view, there was a very good moderation system in place from YikYak - sure, anyone could post something anonymously that was malicious and hateful - but it was incredibly easy to clear it from YikYak.
The student body also took a huge interest in making sure that YikYak stayed in the spirit of anonymous; lot of articles in the student paper about it, lot of rants on the random Facebook Confess pages, and YikYak itself was filled with comments about keeping "stupid shit" off of it. Did some kids still post stupid stuff? Sure, but the rest were more inclined to help with the upkeep.
[+] [-] afarrell|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rxhernandez|8 years ago|reply
I mean is this really true? I was interacting with UCI students when I spent nights working in the Google complex. That's at least a couple mile radius.
[+] [-] jancsika|8 years ago|reply
There's still value in posting such weak anonymous messages, but the foreknowledge that it will eventually get broken would ward off the worst of the abuses.
[+] [-] kuschku|8 years ago|reply
Jodel, a German YikYak clone, is still alive and well – in fact, doing better than ever.
Might be due to different environments, different moderation approaches, but it works.
[+] [-] Forge36|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjar|8 years ago|reply
I'm not even sure if this was a response to harassment, at the time it almost seemed like a pivot for the company - To become the next Snapchat or Facebook, sell targeted ads, and become what every other social company does. This was not what users wanted. It was the only place where people could truly make their thoughts heard without fearing social backlash, which is an issue of incredible importance for University students. And being able to talk with people of a similar age from your University was the perfect gauge for all those things you might want to say but can't. And the handles feature completely removed that. It became extremely easy to tie a person to a handle (Simply watch them while they've got the app open!). There was clear and immediate backlash and people started uninstalling the app en-masse, even posting on the platform about why they were doing so. Yik Yak reversed the update but the damage had already been done - People didn't trust the company to make the right decision any more, and the majority of users never reinstalled.
Note that I'm not saying harassment was good and that the company should have just thrown their hands up in the air and done nothing - The change marking offensive language was welcome, and responding to geo-fence requests in problem areas was fine. But the article fails to mention that the community moderation is incredibly effective. Stupid and offensive yaks were removed quickly through the power of the community - It only took 5 people to say "I don't like this" and you could remove a post.
Perhaps where I was (A small university in the north east of England), we didn't feel any real harassment. People posted racist and homophobic things occasionally, but these posts were quickly removed. Changes to the apps main functionality and appeal came overnight and surprised many people. They now hated the app, aimed at removing a problem that simply didn't exist in the community.
RIP Yik Yak. I'll miss you.
[+] [-] SimbaOnSteroids|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Svekax|8 years ago|reply
There are so few places left in the US where someone can engage in free speech. Free speech is nearly nonexistent on college campuses. Yik Yak was offering a product users couldn't find anywhere else. But they threw it all away.
[+] [-] quotemstr|8 years ago|reply
The next Yik Yak needs to be fully decentralized --- with anonymous development, so there's nobody to sue --- and with a network architecture that resists technical blocking attempts. The next Yik Yak needs to treat censors as adversaries, not partners. Only this approach can bring anonymous communication to its full potential.
[+] [-] Danihan|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WikipediasBad|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] s73ver|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Fej|8 years ago|reply
If you really want local, anonymous communication, make a throwaway account on reddit and visit a given school's subreddit.
If you just want to shitpost, visit /b/.
[+] [-] jjar|8 years ago|reply
Reddit also brings the issue that you're stuck talking to the same types of people - Generally young, white, nerdy guys. That girl on your rowing team or, the one you met in a club last week and oh so need to know the name of certainly has never heard of reddit - but she will have Yik Yak! The barrier to entry is so low, and it used to be a real talking point on campus. It was a social faux pas not to have it installed.
[+] [-] danajp|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tyingq|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skywhopper|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xor1|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oevi|8 years ago|reply
[0] https://jodel-app.com/
[1] https://jodel-app.com/guidelines.html
[+] [-] afabisch|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theparanoid|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DonHopkins|8 years ago|reply
But don't be surprised, because it's already happened: Germany's Jodel network is much more successful than Yik Yak, with its strict guidelines [8] against racism, discrimination and hate speech, so it isn't a safe space for racists, like Yik Yak was and the White House still is [9].
[1] Trump’s election has created “safe spaces” for racists: Southern Poverty Law Center’s Heidi Beirich on the wave of hate crimes: http://www.salon.com/2017/03/08/trumps-election-has-created-...
[2] Sean Spicer turns the White House into a safe space for conservative media: https://newrepublic.com/minutes/140896/sean-spicer-turns-whi...
[3] I'm tweeting from under my desk because President Obama wiretapped me: http://www.rollcall.com/news/opinion/capitol-ink-white-house...
[4] On Campus, Trump Fans Say They Need ‘Safe Spaces’: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/08/us/politics/political-div...
[5] The Trump Bros Have Found Their Safe Space: https://www.buzzfeed.com/annehelenpetersen/the-trump-bros-ha...
[6] Republicans who once mocked ‘safe spaces’ are feeling sensitive over protests : https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/after-a-campaign-sea...
[7] Trump demands safe space for Mike Pence after he was booed at Hamilton: http://www.avclub.com/article/trump-demands-safe-space-mike-...
[8] Jodel Community Guidelines: https://jodel-app.com/guidelines.html
[9] Mr. President, come out of your safe space: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/page/ct-trump-med...
[+] [-] mokash|8 years ago|reply
Wonder if it is possible to run an app like this at cost somehow.
[+] [-] Alex3917|8 years ago|reply
Given that it's just an API serving short text snippets, the hosting costs shouldn't be more than a few cents per user per year. Let's say you're serving one university with 50,000 students, and your hosting costs are $3,000 per year... Just send out an update email once a quarter with a few ads at the end and you've more than covered your expenses.
[+] [-] DonHopkins|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lgleason|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m3kw9|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GhostVII|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] repomies6991|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] qmarchi|8 years ago|reply
We live in a digital age where we can control a large amount of our information stream. If we don't like something, we just turn off the stream. It's like left-wing advocates and Fox. They don't like it, so they don't watch it.
If you don't like what people are posting on some service, remove the service, inform people you know that you don't care about what's posted.
Go on living, stop being a hyper-sensitive prick about people saying mean things. They're going to say them whether or not it's on Yik-Yak, 4chan, or Facebook.
But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm missing something. Let me know. I love being wrong, it lets me learn new things.
[+] [-] criley2|8 years ago|reply
So, I think the concept of society especially for teenagers in their school-controlled world is very interesting.
You're ostensibly right, "just turn it off", but I think it's more complicated.
So why would someone go to a place voluntarily where they are being attacked?
Maybe, it's an important part of the society there, an important forum that the most respected people are using.
Being a part of your local Yik Yak for teenagers is like going to I/O or WWDC, you're in the nexus of the community.
I think those chats acted that way for many teenagers. The location-binding feature is perfect for the insular school communities to create exclusive popular communities.
And to be as mean as they wanted through them.
Also with regards to harassment, Yik Yak would commonly be a place where people go to discuss real life harassment of others.
So, for those unfortunate few, they weren't going to Yik Yak and seeing harassment, rather, they never went, but their harassers used Yik Yak to discuss, refine, and promote the real life harassment.
I think it's very complicated to try and insert ourselves back into the insular school mentality to try and understand this, but I think it's simple that Yik Yak was/is a popular tool for coordinating real life bullying.
[+] [-] iClaudiusX|8 years ago|reply
People seem to live under this illusion that the internet is somehow completely removed from real life, that the bigotry and hate doesn't count if it's over a computer. "Just close your eyes and pretend it isn't happening. So what if people are calling your house, your employer, your family; stalking you everywhere you go; threatening to kill you on an hourly basis; calling in a SWAT raid. Just ignore it!"
On the contrary, I think it's long past time our society grew up and stopped trying to make excuses for outrageously bad behavior. These aren't harmless pranks. They're part of a culture that normalizes hate to the point that it emboldens people to commit violence, on college campuses and elsewhere.
https://wamu.org/story/17/05/24/wake-college-park-murder-cam...
[+] [-] soneca|8 years ago|reply
In a way you are overestimating the maturity of teenagers and young adults. In another way I think you are overestimating your own (and anyone's) ability to handle personal offense on a topic that you are sensitive about from a person that you know and it is close to you (you don't know who is, but you know you know the person, that's the point of hyper local).
The article touchs on that. One thing is a person saying things you don't like on TV directed to the masses. Another thing is a person far from you and who you don't know saying bad things directly to you and your friends. And yet another thing is someone you know and it is close to you saying bad things directly to you and your friends. This last one is much harder to act like you don't care.
But, ultimately, it is not about being right or wrong, it is about exercising empathy. Understanding that people react differently to situations and we have to consider that if we care for them. Doesnt matter if we personally would react so much better than them or not.
[+] [-] brudgers|8 years ago|reply
The problem from Koster's perspective is that when the target of harrassment/abuse/etc. turns off the source feed the feed still goes into the target's community. The communications analogy is not hanging up the telephone. The harrasement/abuse/etc. is delivered in public. Even if the target does not see it, the target's community does.
Perhaps an analogy is that one afternoon all of the target's neighbors opened their mailbox to find a flier falsely asserting that the target was a child molester. Most of the intended effect stems from the target's neighbors reading the flier. It doesn't matter much if the target read it. And in conversations with neighbors, "no I did not read it" does not make it better...and the fact that there are conversations with neighbors means that not reading the flier is not a way of avoiding the harassment/abuse/etc.
[+] [-] chrshawkes|8 years ago|reply